Repainting and Body Work - August 2017

The car's exterior was really in exceptional condition, despite being 35 years old. The two previous owners rarely exposed the car to the harsh Chicago winters and kept the car garaged. The original owners, as they grew older, evidently had some trouble getting the car into and out of the garage. There was a garage door frame scrape on the right side rear quarter panel, a dent on the left front quarter panel, and a large gouge on the top of the trunk where a garage door obviously descended. In addition, there was a rusted out patch about 6 in x 6 in behind the right front wheel. But besides a bit of surface rust, there were only two rusted-out patches that required cutting and filling with sheet metal. In addition, there was some very subtle evidence the car had met with a hailstorm.

My original car was GM 'India Brown.' Not a thrilling colour, but it still beat the utterly awful pea-soup green GM 'Golden Olive' of this Chicago car. So, since it really needs many panels repainted due to the bodywork, I decided to go the extra mile (and dollar) and colour to brown. That required repainting such things as door jambs and the underside of the trunk lid. The roof and roof pillars didn't need to be painted since I had a tan vinyl roof installed.

A friend recommended FixAuto in Okotoks, but widespread car damage due to a summer hailstorm had them backed up for the better part of a year. After six months of waiting to get on their docket, their owner referred me to Chadd Anderson of Blackie, Alberta. Chadd did the bodywork and paint over the course of about three months in the spring and summer of 2017 and it's a beautiful job. Included was black paint on the fender surfaces in the engine compartment and painting the inside of the trunk lid and interior trunk surfaces. Also, the door jambs were meticulously sanded and painted. The only 'pea-soup green' that can still be found on the car is a bit of overspray on the firewall.

The paint job has a fantastic deep reflective shine with metallic flecks.